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Terrorism

More War In Reaction To Foley Murder Will Fuel ISIS

August 21, 2014 Owen Jones, www.theguardian.com , , ,
The first defeat for the alleged killers of James Foley would be for him to be remembered as a courageous journalist. Reporting from a war zone is riskier than ever: over 200 media workers died in the Iraq war, more than any other conflict; at least 70 journalists were killed in global conflicts last year; and Agence France-Presse estimates that at least 30 have died this year. Foley had already spent 44 days in captivity at the hands of Gaddafi’s forces in Libya, but that did not deter him from seeking to uncover the truth about Syria. His apparent killers want him to be remembered as a tool to spread terror; celebrating his work would be an act of defiance. Everything about the video seemingly of Foley’s murder is intended to chill. It is unlikely that Islamic State (Isis) selected an executioner with a strong London accent for no reason. It was the Iraq war that first popularised the execution video, but hearing the blood-curdling threats and dogma of Isis recited in tones that are all too familiar is itself a message. Terrorism by definition aims to spread terror to achieve its political ends. One of the reasons Isis has outmanoeuvred its rivals is because it has embraced social media so effectively. By publicising its atrocities online, it tells would-be opponents what will happen if it is resisted, and this partly explains why so many have fled rather than confront Isis forces. The ruthless use of social media has proved instrumental in the toppling of entire cities. This operation is being gladly assisted by those in the west who portray Isis as a unique, undiluted evil that needs to be bombed out of existence, granting the militant group the mystique it clearly craves and relies on.

Muslims File Suit Over Terror Watch List

August 16, 2014 CAIR, www.cair.com , ,
On Thursday, August 14, the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MI) will hold a news conference to announce the filing of a lawsuit on behalf of several Muslims challenging their placement in the government's Terrorist Screening Database - a watch list of "known or suspected terrorists" - without due process. The lawsuit will be filed in the United States District Court, Eastern District of Michigan in Detroit. "The federal government has unjustly and disproportionately targeted American Muslims by routinely adding their names to the Terrorist Screening Database without affording them their rights to due process," said CAIR-MI Staff Attorney Lena Masri. "The lawsuit will challenge the government's broad and unchecked power to secretly label individuals as 'known or suspected terrorists' without concrete facts, but based on only a vague standard of 'reasonable suspicion.'" CAIR-MI's lawsuit challenges the widespread government practice of placing names on watch lists without providing individuals with any notice of the factual basis for their placement and without offering a meaningful opportunity to contest the designation.

ACLU: US Has Illegal Muslim Blacklist

August 7, 2014 Matt Reynolds, www.courthousenews.com , , ,
The United States violates its own immigration laws through an under-the-radar "blacklist" that denies citizenship, green cards and political asylum to thousands of people, including innocent people placed on a terrorist watch list, longtime legal-resident Muslims claim in Federal Court. Lead plaintiff Reem Muhanna, et al. claim that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service has consistently denied their applications for citizenship and lawful permanent residence after secretly blacklisting them as "'national security concerns,'" though they pose no threat to the United States. The ACLU filed the lawsuit on July 31 against the USCIS, the Department of Homeland Security, and a slew of their national and regional officers. The plaintiffs claim that the Citizenship and Immigration Service uses obscure rules, under a program known as the Controlled Application Review and Resolution Program (CARRP), to delay or deny applications. "Under this unfair and unconstitutional program, the government has blacklisted their applications without telling them why and barred them from upgrading their immigration status in violation of the immigration laws," ACLU attorney Jennie Pasquarella said in a statement. The plaintiffs ask the court to order Uncle Sam to judicially settle their applications for citizenship and permanent residence, as required under the Immigration and Nationality Act. The executive branch of the government does not have the authority to set rules on citizenship and permanent residence, the plaintiffs say.

Another Snowden-Style NSA Leaker

August 7, 2014 Ben Mathis-Lilley, www.slate.com , , ,
The U.S. government believes that a new Edward Snowden–style leaker is giving national security documents to journalists affiliated with Snowden confidante Glenn Greenwald, a suspicion that Greenwald has hinted at confirming. From CNN: Proof of the newest leak comes from national security documents that formed the basis of a news story published Tuesday by the Intercept, the news site launched by Glenn Greenwald, who also published Snowden's leaks. The Intercept article focuses on the growth in U.S. government databases of known or suspected terrorist names during the Obama administration. The article cites documents prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center dated August 2013, which is after Snowden flew to Russia to avoid U.S. criminal charges. (It's not clear why the government believes there's "a" new leaker as opposed to multiple new leakers.)

An Inquiry Into The 9/11 Commission’s 10th Anniversary Report

August 1, 2014 Mike Lofgren, www.truth-out.org , , ,
One of the many things I learned in government is that the investigative commissions which inquire into a scandal, disaster or atrocity are usually intended to bury the real causes of the incident and trumpet other circumstantial or irrelevant details as if they are shocking or novel. In other words, commissions are cover-ups pretending to be exposés. This is not always the case, but as the stakes rise, it becomes the accepted practice. One of the masters of this technique has been former House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Lee H. Hamilton (D-Indiana). He cut his teeth as chairman of the House Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran, where he was careful to stop short of implicating President Ronald Reagan of impeachable criminal culpability, and, more importantly, provided the same service to the future President George H.W. Bush. A few smaller fries took the fall, and Reagan, the man whom Republicans retrospectively credit for making the sun shine and the rain fall, was chastised for not being in control of his own immediate subordinates. Bush, of course, was out of the loop. In 1992, Hamilton chaired the House October Surprise Task Force, and failed once again to find Bush culpable of criminal misdeeds - in this case, the allegation being that Bush was involved in secret and illegal negotiations with Iran to deny the American hostages' release until after the 1980 elections. Twenty years later, however, Hamilton confessed to investigative journalist Robert Parry that he now has second thoughts about the October surprise. As they used to say in vaudeville, now he tells us.

The Constitutional Nightmare Of The Terror Watch List

July 25, 2014 Conor Friedersdorf, www.theatlantic.com , , , ,
At long last, Americans know more about how people end up on a terrorist watchlist—though still not much. Early on in a just-leaked 166-page U.S. government guide to officially declaring someone a terrorist or suspected terrorist, a passage acknowledges that "watchlisting is not an exact science." The whole enterprise has "inherent limitations," in part because "analytic judgments may differ regarding whether subjective criteria have been met," the document states. "Given these realities, the U.S. government's watchlisting process attempts to safeguard the American people from a TERRORIST attack while safeguarding privacy, civil rights and civil liberties." Despite this explicit, official recognition of the system's inherent dangers, the Bush and Obama administrations both conspicuously failed to incorporate basic safeguards to protect innocent U.S. citizens and foreigners from inclusion. Their gross negligence stems from disregard for longstanding legal norms and protections and from unwarranted faith in the federal bureaucracy. This hubris is at direct odds with the logic of checks and balances within the American system that go back to the founding of the country. Consider the features of the U.S. system that have traditionally distinguished us from repressive regimes where innocents are wrongfully labeled enemies of the state, or from Franz Kafka's stories:

Obama Approves Massive Increase In Terror List

July 24, 2014 Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux, www.firstlook.org , , ,
The “March 2013 Watchlisting Guidance,” a 166-page document issued last year by the National Counterterrorism Center, spells out the government’s secret rules for putting individuals on its main terrorist database, as well as the no fly list and the selectee list, which triggers enhanced screening at airports and border crossings. The new guidelines allow individuals to be designated as representatives of terror organizations without any evidence they are actually connected to such organizations, and it gives a single White House official the unilateral authority to place “entire categories” of people the government is tracking onto the no fly and selectee lists. It broadens the authority of government officials to “nominate” people to the watchlists based on what is vaguely described as “fragmentary information.” It also allows for dead people to be watchlisted.

Citizens Sue Over Suspicious Activity Program

July 12, 2014 Kevin Gosztola, www.dissenter.firedoglake.com , , , ,
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit on behalf of five United States citizens challenging a domestic surveillance program, which involves the collection of “suspicious activity reports” on individuals. The federal government has a National Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative (NSI) that, according to the ACLU’s filed complaint [PDF], “encourages state and local law enforcement agencies as well as private actors to collect and report information that has a potential nexus to terrorism in the form of so-called ‘suspicious activity reports [SARs].’” Any individual who is flagged as having a “potential nexus to terrorism” will automatically be subject to “law enforcement scrutiny, which may include intrusive questioning by local or federal law enforcement agents.” Plus, “Even when the Federal Bureau of Investigation concludes that the person did not have any nexus to terrorism, a SAR can haunt that individual for decades, as SARs remain in federal databases for up to 30 years.”

Middle School Students Called “Terrorists”

July 9, 2014 Dan Johnson, www.mintpressnews.com , , , ,
A group of Georgia middle school students decided they had enough of the school dress code and would violate it together in an act of civil disobedience. The school, Cowan Road Middle, found out about the plan and suspended the students for…terrorism. What? According to WSB-TV (emphasis added): “To me it was just a bunch of 13-year-olds acting crazy,” said Christopher Cagle, the father of a suspended honor roll student. Cagle said the principal called the students’ actions terroristic threats. He said the principal was too swift and severe with the punishment.” Violating the school dress code is indeed a violation of school policy, but to elevate it to a level where one could be indefinitely detained, without charge or trial, is going way too far.

Victory For Dr. Sami Al-Arian: Feds Drop All Charges!

July 1, 2014 USPCN, www.uspcn.org , , ,
All criminal charges against Palestinian American community leader and professor, Dr. Sami Al-Arian, were dropped on Friday, June 27th. The United States Palestinian Community Network (USPCN) congratulates Dr. Al-Arian, his family, and his legal defense team for this huge victory. Dr. Al-Arian was facing criminal contempt charges for refusing to testify in front of a grand jury unrelated to a case in which he accepted a plea bargain from the U.S. government. The government’s move to dismiss the charges is a response to trial Judge Leonie Brinkema having not yet ruled on a defense motion that was filed over five years ago. As Dr. Al-Arian and his family were living in limbo awaiting Brinkema’s decision, another U.S. District Court Judge, Anthony Trenga, signed the order to accept the government’s motion, which ends close to two decades of repression against the doctor. The witch hunt began in 1994, when federal agents began surveilling, wiretapping, and investigating him. In 2003, federal prosecutors in Tampa filed an indictment which alleged that he was affiliated with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, one of the many Palestinian resistance groups that the U.S. State Department calls a terrorist organization.

Obama Uses ISRAELI Supreme Court Decision To Justify Drone Killing

June 25, 2014 Rania Khalek, www.electronicintifada.net , , , ,
Almost three years have passed since the United States government extrajudicially murdered American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki with a drone strike in Yemen. Al-Awlaki, although described by the government as a “terrorist” mastermind, had never been charged with any crime. The Obama adminstration refused to disclose the legal reasoning behind the killing. But thanks to Freedom Information Act lawsuits by The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a redacted version of the Department of Justice memo which outlines the Obama administration’s rationale for killing American citizens abroad without trial is now public. Authored by David Barron — former chief of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, who has since been appointed by Obama to a federal judgeship — the 41-page document seeks to legitimize so-called targeted killings, a practice Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, vigorously condemned Israel for using against Palestinians during the second intifada.

Egyptian Injustice: Journalists Sentenced To 7 Years

June 23, 2014 AP, www.AP.org , , , ,
An Egyptian court convicted three Al-Jazeera journalists and sentenced them to seven years in prison each on terrorism-related charges in a verdict Monday that stunned their families and was quickly denounced as a blow to freedom of expression. International pressure mounted on Egypt's president to pardon the three. The verdicts against Australian Peter Greste, Canadian-Egyptian Mohamed Fahmy and Egyptian Baher Mohammed came after a 5-month trial that Amnesty International described as a "sham," calling Monday's rulings "a dark day for media freedom in Egypt." The three, who have been detained since December, contend they are being prosecuted simply for doing their jobs as journalists, covering Islamist protests against the ouster last year of President Mohammed Morsi. Three other foreign journalists, two Britons and a Dutch citizen, were sentenced to 10 years in absentia. Media groups have called the trial political, part of a fight between the government and the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera network , which authorities accuse of bias toward the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi. The network denies any bias.

Chris Hedges And Noam Chomsky (3/3)

June 21, 2014 The Real News, www.therealnews.com , , , ,
NOAM CHOMSKY, LINGUIST AND POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It's just exactly as Orwell said: it's instilled into you. It's part of a deep indoctrination system which leads to a certain way of looking at the world and looking at authority, which says, yes, we have to be subordinate to authority, we have to believe we're very independent and free and proud of it. As long as we keep within the limits, we are. Try to go beyond those limits, you're out. CHRIS HEDGES, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST: Well, what was fascinating about--I mean, the point, just to buttress this point: when you took the major issues of the Occupy movement, they were a majoritarian movement. When you look back on the Occupy movement, what do you think its failings were, its importance were?

Recent Crimes Of The FBI

June 21, 2014 Derrick Broze, www.occupy.com , ,
On June 3, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Justice Department will revive a task force on domestic terrorism to curb that form of violence in the United States. Holder stated that the Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee will work to eliminate danger from violent individuals who may be motivated by anti-government or racist views. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Division of the Justice Department, and the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee will lead the efforts. The committee was originally launched to focus on “right-wing extremism” in the aftermath of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Now, the latest move in the U.S. government’s War on Terror comes as shootings in Las Vegas and New Brunswick, Canada, have reignited the debate around perceived domestic terror threats. While Holder believes “it is critical that we return our focus to potential extremists here at home,” a careful examination of the Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee – and specifically the FBI's role in the effort – reveals that the greatest threat to the freedom and safety of individuals in the United States may be the federal government itself.

We Cannot Have Political Surveillance And Democracy, Too

June 17, 2014 Privacy SOS, www.privacysos.org , , , ,
From the UK to the United States, law enforcement at all levels is conflating dissent with terrorism, threatening the possibility for open societies and democratic change. In both countries, the war on terror—cast as an endless and border-less battle over ideology and religion—provides dangerous new latitude for governments to criminalize and monitor speech. But political surveillance today remains what it has always been: a way for governments to uphold the status quo in the face of demands for change. Perhaps then it shouldn't come as a surprise to find that politicians who ally with activists are prime targets of state security spying, in both London and Boston. New reports out of England confirm that London’s Metropolitan Police has been keeping track of politicians in a “extremists” database. Vice reports: Through the use of data protection laws, Jenny Jones, a London Green Party peer, and Ian Driver, a local councillor for the party, obtained files on themselves held in the database, which is supposedly used to monitor activists who use criminal means to push their ideas.
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